toby do you want to be in the video
okay so I had said that I would do a follow-up video talking about some of
the traits that I personally experienced and that's what this is I guess a good
place to start would be with childhood my mother always said that I was a
perfect baby that was just like she called me her
sunshine. I was a perfect baby and then the more that I looked into things
and started out like asking my mom about what I was like as a child she was like
oh yeah you were great I could wake up in the morning and you would wake up
and you'd be in your crib and you wouldn't, you wouldn't call for me
you would just sit there for hours and I was like ooh I mean like that's
really convenient when you're busy and you don't want a baby to cry but it's
also a really normal thing for babies to want their parents and stuff
so that's fun. as a kid I don't really like know if there were a
ton of sensory things. we had a drawer full of mittens and warm
clothes and I would just pull open the mitten drawer and sit in it and then
I would just put on all of the mittens and stuff. I have pictures of me
in backpacks. I had these backpacks that I used to
wear all the time and I just liked to wear them and
stuff there's pictures of me sleeping with mittens and backpacks
on cuz like that's what I did. a lot of kids I guess like often take their
clothes off because of sensory stuff I wanted them on all of them all
the time so that's interesting. no language or developmental delays.
I was a super finicky kid as far as like throwing up and I always had
stomachaches and we needed to go to all these doctors which is not on the
diagnostic criteria but anecdotally I guess is a very common thing. in
addition to that I was so clumsy and I would fall over all the time
and I would like turn the corner too quickly and smash into corners and
walls and I fell up and down the stairs and my mother was actually so
worried about it that she thought there was
something legitimately wrong with me and in addition to that like I was like I
used to get like I was a I really liked to read and I you
to get like so focused on reading that if my mom talked to me I didn't respond
or didn't hear or anything so there were like a lot of times I would just get
like fixated on something and then like not respond to people talking to me
and so she was like maybe it's like a hearing balance problem I remember doing
all this like hearing tests and then like nothing came of it and then I got a
cat scan because she was legitimately worried that I had a brain tumor or
something that's how clumsy I was lots of fun fact other fun facts as far as um
special interests go I think obviously like boys are more into like trains and
fire trucks I think even like neurotypical boys I loved animals but
like not like oh I like okay I do actually really like horses but not like
puppies and kittens and like unicorns I was like I remember I discovered the
word world Wolverine in a knight cyclopædia when I was like 7 and read
everything about Wolverines and just thought they were the best animal and I
did like projects on them in class was like what do you want to do about and I
was like Wolverines and like everything about them and ferrets are actually like
in like a similar they're all muscle it's Wolverines too and so my like
interest in Wolverines then like intensely went into like other animals
and all the animals they're related to and that like quickly turned into
obsession with ferrets and you'll notice that that's not something that has
stopped really even just like telling people facts that they don't want to
know is like every time somebody's like oh but something ferrets I wrote it and
I'm like I have this like speech that just comes out all the time of like
actually and so all of my close friends can tell you all about ferrets not by
choice and it was horses I think as I got like a little bit older and I feel
like every little girls obsessed with horses so it's like normal but like I
managed to like get a job kind of a volunteer position when I was like 13
and just would like sit in the barn and be so happy I wouldn't need to sit me
there all day I would love it and then that sort of like turned into a more
working position I did get bullied at work but I didn't I don't know if it
really counseling because I didn't care because
I was just so happy that there were horses around and I was learning things
about horses that like literally the girls being like hey you we don't like
you today you can't be her friend like making like stupid comments about that
all the time and like not inviting me to like oh we're all going for lunch except
for you and I'm just like that's fine I'm gonna stay at the bar I didn't care
I was just the horses that was enough for me
so that's I guess really convenient it still weak like you just like a weird
routine stuff is like I always ate my food in a specific order I still
sometimes know I still do it a lot of stress about like the order in which I
eat food and I hate to have like unevenness and so like even if one's
hands just like a little bit way I'll like completely soaked both hands and
then like driving both so that it's like a normal even amount of wet and dry and
then like almost dry Oh as far as like steaming goes I don't
know what if I did anything as a kid as a kid I was like like growing up I was a
chewer and I just used to chew on everything and so like I guess that
counts as this Tim I like pencil caps again you said just Roy pencils I used
to destroy pen let's like crack the plastic I cannot count the number of
times I chewed on a pen and ended up with a mouthful of ink like it was like
you didn't just chew on the pan a little bit it was like I would break them and
then like multiple times ended up being like I had on the bathroom because I
would like crack the pen and I would just like get ink and I know gross like
anytime I had something with a straw I would like methodically like chew this
drop until it was like a tiny little ball and often people like we're like oh
you do have any more gum and I was like this doesn't come this is a straw and
they're like well it's gross I hope I played gum doesn't have the same kind of
like resistance that has tried us different not as pleasant to chew I
don't know that I was ever like super-sensitive DeNiro's but now that I
have my noise-canceling headphones they're like changing my life because
like I don't think I ever realized like how training it is to like process so
many different things and when you like can take a lot of that ambient noise
away I'm just like yeah suddenly like I thought being in this place may be
anxious turns out if you think of the noise it's not so bad actually I
probably should have known that noise is bother me because like one of the things
that I've always done since I was like a little kid was like to
cover my ears when I just like wanted to calm down or whatever or like was just
like by myself I covered my ears a lot and I remember
being like super ashamed of it and like knowing that it was weird like had a
dream that I had a neighbor had seen me covering my ears cuz I did it I do it
still when I'm in the bathroom especially and she was like and I was
like oh no she's gonna tell people that I really cover my ears when I go to the
bathroom which I just thought was like super strange but I was like like it's
something that's persistent things like when I was trying to sleep like the
sound of my own heartbeat you've so drive me nuts I feel like mom against me
I mean she be like oh no way like my heartbeat is too loud
like I can hear it in my ears and it's so awful and I was just like couldn't
sleep because of it I was like super worried about touching I remember like I
did get me kind of in junior high because like as a 13 year old girl like
girls are like we're gonna hug each other every time you see and I was just
like please don't touch me and like now I'm a lot better I just like firm touch
instead of light touch which i think is fine like going through school like I
would think I was like most of my teachers like me because I was like very
very polite and very honest and like very direct about things and um but I
would just like do weird things like just like get up out of a classroom and
like leave like if I didn't want to be there I would just be like though I'm
gonna go now and like I wouldn't say anything I just
like get up and leave and then it'd be like where you going and I'd be like to
the bathroom and then keep walking and it was like I don't think anybody of my
teachers like really knew what to do with me because like I wasn't I was
clearly not intentionally being disrespectful the homework it's like oh
did you do your work I'm like no it's like why did it I was like I really feel
like it and she just it'd just be like what is like who look what kind of
student is just like I didn't do a thing and like the best thing I was just like
so honest and didn't even under think why would I lie about that um so those
are some of the tricks I watch for a really long time I didn't cover
I covered like I covered like half of the things on the sheet that I wrote so
for all of you total internet diagnosis it's not the whole story it's probably
never gonna be
this is probably gonna be choppy because it's the Internet
so this is Toby a special interest from zero Toby second only to my love of
backpacks and mittens